you know, that is 60% of what they want to take additionally out of the government. so why would we do that? where is the leadership that says we're going to get this stopped we have a special subcommittee that looks at this, oversight it, look at the bad actors in government ever going to demand people who make this decisions get fired and those not performing pay the money back. you can defraud the federal government. you cannot perform on a contract and you can do it with impunity and that is because members of congress are basically not willing for inexperienced to not know that you ought to be able to hold people accountable for what they say they are going to do. whether it's a federal employee, a procurement employee for the company that is providing.

.. her tenure in the bush administration where she served as national security adviser from 2001 to 2005 and as the 66th secretary of state from 2005 to 2009. this is about 50 minutes.

[applause] >> it's one thing led to learn about american history in the classroom. it's quite another to of for these lessons up close and personal with one of the 21st centuries chief architects of american foreign policy. the leadership lecture series was established by ambassador xu cobb to commemorate her husband, chuck birthday. please join me in recognizing sue and chuck for 25 years of providing the university of miami community with the opportunity to host insightful and a provocative leaders from all walks of life. [applause] >> i also want the students to thank them for generously donating 300 secretary rice's very big books which were given to the first 300 students who

attended this year's event. [applause] >> the university takes no credit for doing this. i want to thank our very good friend of the books and books, the university met with him recently to discuss launching a new partnership to bring speakers to the campus and one week later he called to say we are going to have an opportunity to host the secretaries first public tour event. i think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. thank you very much. [applause] >> now they have sponsored other distinguished speakers, the founder ross perot, the commissioner david stern, david gergen. sue and chuck have dedicated their careers and energy to serving their country and their

community and a variety of ways. between them, they are formidable, diplomatic corps that spends from iceland to jamaica to d.c. to tallahassee and miami. they served from 2001 to 2005 during the same time when the secretary served as the national security advisor and u.s. secretary of state governor bush appointed the secretary of state of florida from 2005 to 2007. she has taught at ford service institute as the co-chair of the u.s. the part of state mandatory seminar for the newly appointed ambassadors and in an interesting twist she spoke at stanford university where secretary rice is a very distinguished member of the faculty and former provost and the university of miami school of law. she was the u.s. ambassador to the republic of iceland during the administration of george h. w. bush and during the ronald reagan administration he served

as the under secretary and assistant secretary at the u.s. department of commerce where he was responsible for trade, development, export, and international travel and tourism and he was appointed by the florida governor jeb bush and charlie crist to serve on the statewide board. both sue and chuck serve on the board of directors of the council of american ambassadors. she's a deval graduate of stanford while we can't claim him as an ally, he's a longtime member and past chairman of the board of the university of miami board of trustees. please welcome the miami diplomatic dynamic duo, the ambassador cobb. [applause] thank you, president shalala. ambassador rice, cobb, guests, we are pleased to have all of you here. this whole thing is sort of

unfolded around the interest of my husband and leadership, so we have been able to have outstanding leaders come through this area we have arranged to have the university of miami students and our guests participate, and that has been an extraordinary pleasure. this year we hit the jackpot. but condoleezza rice and. we do have a relationship that goes back as you know i think dr. rice a provost at stanford and is now at the woodrow wilson institute. chaka and i spent eight years on the campus of stanford. it wasn't because we couldn't graduate. that is a different story. and we have many friends from the service and government in

stanford and elsewhere. and of course we also have the privilege of service to the country at very consequential times. one of the things i enjoy thinking about is leadership also, and i think that dr. rice has a transformational leader. in fact i think of the president shalala and ambassador cobb as transformational leaders come and you might think about and ask what are the common traits, vision, contextual knowledge, understanding the environment in which you are operating, communication and motivational skills, they are challenging, but they are in powering, rock-solid integrity, unusual determination, perseverance and

perseverance. as you might guess, a great admirer of dr. rice, not quite as much as moamar ghadaffi. i don't have the scrapbook. [laughter] [applause] but i do have an enormous regard for dr. rice and i am jury pleased that she is here to do her formal introductions and i would like to invite the ambassador cobb to the stage. [applause] >> good morning everybody. thank you, president shalala, and my life for those nice comments. before i introduce condoleezza rice, i want to share with all of you if favoritism that i have, a bias that i have come and this is that i have a strong

affinity for smart, strong, powerful, successful and charismatic leaders. as evidence of that -- [applause] as evidence of that, i have been married to one of those lease for 52 years. [applause] but a second evidence of that i had the pleasure to chair the search committee for the university of miami president and our first choice by far was donna shalala because she had all of those skills and all of those kind of things. [applause] and then a third come on the board of the woodrow wilson center, and i had the honor to

share its committee recently and our first choice was condoleezza rice, who clearly has all of those skills as i will talk more about an imminent. [applause] unfortunately, we couldn't get her away from stamford, and we couldn't get her away from writing this great book. and so, we were successful in encouraging the congressman jane harman, who's a congressman from california and also paid jury charismatic driven powerful, wonderful, smartly the. so it's quite obvious from all of this that i really do have a bias and for that reason, it is really an opportunity and a pleasure for me to introduce the most successful woman in the world. and i really do believe that. so, you heard from my wife about

leadership skills, and clearly condoleezza rice has all of those. but in my opinion, the most important leadership skills she has is -- and i think all successful leaders have this -- is the ability to bring people together, to team build, to seek a common ground. and no one is more skilled at this than condoleezza rice. as national security adviser -- as you all know -- it's her job to bring really diverse personalities together, and so in her case, it was dick cheney, vice president, colin powell, secretary of state, and donald rumsfeld, secretary defense, really different personalities, really strong personalities come a lot of tension in the room as you will read in this book, but she got a consensus, and under her leadership and the president's leadership they've led some of the important

decisions of this century and because of that some of that ability to team build. she also used that as the secretary of state and dealt with problems in palestine and israel on one hand and then was pakistan and india on the other and then day after day with countries that have really diverse and fundamental differences again no one was better in bringing anyone to get there than dr. condoleezza rice. at age 38, she was named the provost of stamford and as you heard that's the normal moderate. she was the first woman, the first minority and first provost in stanford history. she showed exceptional leadership skills at stanford is that since the time the universities all over the country are trying to get her to be their president, but again, they were as unsuccessful as i was at getting hurt.

she is a leader with incredibly diverse skills. she's a concert pianist, sports affection although we and because of her leadership skills has been offered to be the commissioner of the pack 12 and has been considered the commissioner of the nfl and a lot of other sports franchises. [laughter] she serves on the board of hewlett-packard, chevron, charles schwab, grant corporation carnegie, transamerica and many other boards and the civic and corporate organizations. so, ladies and gentlemen, it is my really distinct pleasure, and i think know how your honor does this university have than to have a leader with so many talents and experiences and so i present to you before secretary of state and the national security adviser, condoleezza rice. [applause] >> if thank you.

madam secretary, welcome. how long have i been inviting you here? >> two years. most of our questions today were submitted by students and let me start with the first one. how do i get to be secretary of state? >> good question. let me just start by thanking you very much. and i have known the president shalala as secretary shalala, but also as my friend donna seóul thank you very much for having me here at the u. [applause] i want to thank my good friends, the investor cobb for their service to the country and for their extraordinary friendship

as well. and thanks to you, university of miami students, for having me here. well, so how do you become secretary of state? you start as a field of piano major. that's how you start. [laughter] i went to college to become a concert pianist tbi studied from the age of three. there was never any doubt that's what i was going to do. in the summer of my sophomore year i went to something called the aspen festival school, which a lot of prodigy's were there and there were 12-year-olds who played what i could play after one year, they were 12 and i was 17. i decided i was either going to end up teaching 13-year-olds to murder beethoven, so find a career that really isn't for me. fortunately i wandered into a chorus of international politics, and it was taught by a soviet specialist named joseph car sell who was madeleine albright's father committee and he opened up the bulk of

diplomacy and eastern europe to me. and all of a sudden i know what i wanted to be. i wanted to be a soviet specialist. so the first lesson of how you get to where i am is you find something that you absolutely love to do. i would say to each and every one of u.s. students find your passion, not what job you want but what you are passionate about. what is going to meet you get up every day and want to do that. subsequently, if you are fortunate your passion and talent will come together i would become a professor at stanford, and i met when i was a young professor in a seminar at stanford a man named brent scowcroft to ban the national security adviser to the president gerald ford, and was or would become the national security adviser to george h. w. bush. he took an interest in my career, and when president george h. w. bush was elected, he took me with him to be the white house soviet specialist and i was fortunate to be the

white house soviet specialist at the end of the cold war. it doesn't get much better than that. but the second lesson is find people that are interested in you and in your career who can help guide you in the open opportunities. we say i want to get there on my own. nobody gets there absolutely on their own. there are always mentors and there is an important lesson to say you have to have low models and mentors that look like you. i have been waiting for a soviet specialist mentor i would still be waiting. so your role models can come in any color, shape or size. just find somebody that really cares about you and cares about your career. the final part of the story is when in 1990 michel gorbachev came to the 1990's and we were sitting together on the lawn of the white house in the presidential helicopter getting

ready to take after california. gorbachev, the secret service i thought i am really glad i changed my major. if you work hard and you don't worry too much about what comes next incredible opportunities open themselves. i would say get involved in politics at some point. i worked for george w. bush and i became a secretary of state. so those are some of the faults that i have, the most important starts right now. find your passion. [applause] let's talk a lot about the organization of the decision making in your role in the national security council.

if he were to edify is now after your experience in the job in particular would you suggest to them that one characteristic of the members of the team whether secretary defense treasury gets along well with others? >> that might eliminate a fair number of people than washington there's no doubt that we have strong personalities but they were debates about substance, they were not personal issues, but nonetheless, we got along just fine until the most stressful time and the most stressful or hear and in iraq so perhaps the lesson is in the so-called normal times to the degree it is ever normal in the decision making in washington it

is important to have differences you can even do it with some tension but you know when things get really tough it is easier if people get along, and that perhaps is the lesson i would say to the president, you can do fine with personalities that may clash if things are going well when they get rough it is a lot harder. >> let me follow-up on that question. its personality but it's also very strong points of view some black and white, some more nuanced as you describe your book but the fact that each political party has this strategy does that need to be reflected in the foreign policy leadership or can you just bring people and to consult with that? so i am pushing you pretty hard on how you put the team together. estimate is a fine and wine because if you put a team together they have things that

are too similar you get a group think and that isn't a good thing. when i was the secretary of state i had a couple of curmudgeons on my staff who would come in and challenge me that everything i wanted to do because i have always thought that if you're constantly and this is true in school, too if you are in the company of people who say amen to everything that you say, find other companies because you don't actually test your assumptions and that way. so i would tend to bear in the direction of people who do have strong views, who expressed an but can also push them aside ultimately and find a way to work together. >> within the political party they do have people with a widely different views you can't anticipate that you are going to go through the tough times, so what characteristic of the foreign policy team he in the

past years we've had foreign policies but never necessarily have the had this kind of substantive expertise that you have. >> we have on the foreign policy team quite experienced foreign policy, she had been the secretary of defense before and vice president cheney had been the chief of staff and the white house, colin powell had been chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the national security we had a lot of expertise but i really to this day not quite sure why sometimes the personalities didn't jell. i think it was the times that set the precedent. we think about people with internal dynamics. islamic think about the team

have strong views because strong views are important you don't want a president who's just hearing one side of the story but think that the team dynamics. >> let's talk a little about latin america and the caribbean to the debt is a success to focus on latin america and the caribbean as a region in developing a u.s. policy given the fact that so many of the country's different in so many of them. i think about latin america and the caribbean as a region there's a kind of natural affinity for trade policy. we do share some problems of just the kind of trance national borders to deal with trafficking

and arms and drugs until there are reasons to work into the region to be also think that since the organization of the states have a democratic charter we should have a view first and foremost the neighborhood as being democratic once you get beyond the big categories you really are talking about the countries that are very different in how they interact with the globe. brazil thinks of itself of course as a regional leader but brazil is one of the most important emerging economies for the whole global economy it's one of as we call them the bricks the emerging economies that has the chance to structure how the economy is going to look going forward. when you think about the countries but obviously the united states when you think about the countries along the pacific rim of latin america

they make connect more to the economy of asia. i was always struck when i would go to something called the summit of the americas which is about latin america and the caribbean and we would have these discussions and travis would take off and everybody would sort of what ever. but then almost a week or two weeks later we would go to the asia pacific economic council. there it is the pacific rim countries of chellie and the pacific rim all the way to canada and all the way out through japan and china and korea and the conversation was completely different. was about global trade and freeing trade. and i actually always thought that in that sense the country had more in common with their asian counterparts than their latin american counterparts. it is how they perceive

themselves as a state of development and significance there. i think it is because if you look at the places like chile now quite developed in many ways, colombia getting there in terms of the development, a country like brazil was interesting because on the one hand, it is leading the global, one of the leaders in the global economy, but with huge income distribution, difficulties that keep it really more on developing countryside. if you look at some of the poorest countries in the central america like a guatemala for instance, you are talking about places you can't reach the farmers in the high land by the highway, and so their problems are to try to build infrastructure so that they can july and the 20th century economy cannot forget the 21st century economy so yes coming to have different levels of development but when you think about it you have radically different levels within the countries. look at the north of mexico and the interior of the country and you have very different levels of development even within the

countries. as the secretary of state, think differently than as a part of the region because of the domestic politics and the relationship? >> i would think they would keep it differently because it is the one country that can't even take a seat at the table because it's not, it doesn't have a democratically elected government and we have a history with cuba and castro's decision for the soviet nuclear capability that threatened the territory of the united states - the anti-american regime and so there are foreign policy reasons principally that we have a different relationship with cuba. but my hope is that in the larger democratization that is going on around the world the cuban people simply can't be left behind. it absolutely has to be the case that when fidel castro goes, the cuban people get the chance to elect the next government and not just hand it to fidel

castro. [applause] >> that was a set up question. [laughter] >> both the national security advisory and the secretary of state are almost firefighters part of the time, you get woken up in the middle of the night, someone does something stupid either in your organization or around the world how do you anticipate the future? there is evidence that while there was the basis for the arab spring for the soviet collapse how do you anticipate the future when you are in those particular leadership roles for both the president but more importantly for the country and how do you organize yourself to do that? >> obviously you try to have experts who are keeping an eye on the events, and in this regard, having embassies for

people who really know the place and can get out into communities one of the things i try to get the foreign officers to do is not stay in the embassy or talk to other foreign officials, but get out in the country come and get a sense for what the conversation is on the streets and in the country and that sometimes will give you a little bit of an early warning. second come on the arab spring we knew something was coming. the freedom agenda that we launched about the middle east, president bush had given his second inaugural address in which he talks about the need for there to be no man, woman or child to live in tyranny and putting in the middle east. i gave a speech at the american university in cairo saying that egypt needed to leave the revolution and i can go to see mubarak the morning i gave the speech and saying to him mr. president, get out ahead of this, get the reforms started

before your people are in the street because what you hope and feel by being in the middle east is the kind of seeding in under that was growing against the authoritarian to were corrupt, who were planning successions from themselves to their sons. you could sense that mubarak and ten nisha were isolated with people telling them people love them but on the streets people didn't love them, so you have -- we had a sense this was coming but what you can know is the spark that would have been a man, a shopkeeper self-taught and leading into tunisia. the best thing you can do is expect it might ignite at any time and to get ahead of it.

so to get our friends in the middle east to reform before the people were in the streets was always trying to get ahead of what happened ultimately and egypt a and tunisia and other places to respect talk about the collapse of the soviet union in terms of what the scholars knew. you were right there. >> i was. we used to laugh when people would say that gorbachev is bound to fall from power. thank you. but when, this was the issue because, the general sense that things are going bad is not enough. people knew that the infrastructure, the political, economic, social soviet union was weak. i went to the soviet union the first time in 1979 to study language. i was there for an extended period of time and i was a student of the soviet military. i remember thinking i had this image of the soviet military as 10 feet tall. and i remember going into a store to buy some little thing

for my family, and they were doing the computation of the crisis on an abacus. i haven't seen an abacus since the second grade in birmingham. i thought this isn't a very difficult place. you start to get a sense that something really wrong is there. so i think the soviet specialists knew that the infrastructure was weak. it took, however, a true believer in the kind of marxist ideology that it could triumph over the fact people were estonian or ukrainian as it took somebody that believed you could reform the soviet union, gorbachev, tried to reform it and then it collapsed. but i can tell you that still in 1990 the soviet union collapsed last december 25th, 1991. in 1990 when we unified in the fall of 1990i don't think anybody thought that the collapse in the soviet union was a year away.

>> one of our students wanted to make sure that i asked about the social media and how the foreign policy as donelson and now follows the social media around the world. and whether that part of the intelligence gathering. >> is now. in fact when i went to the state i took with me some to be to someone named sean mccormack from the white house who was then interested in the emerging social media. there wasn't face the court record but people were on the internet all the time and chat rooms and so we started to understand better what was going on there. i also asked a former student of mine, a gentleman who would later ron go to work for secretary clinton to go and start thinking about did we want to even help people to use social media to democratize. so he created groups of friends, for instance people who would

help overthrow terrorism and columbia who could chat with people in the middle east who were trying to deal with terrorism, as a week starting to use the social media. but i am trying to understand now read is an accelerant, it isn't the cause of the trend but it is an accelerant to read what is interesting is what is happening in the social media in china because the regime is doing everything it can to control the internet. it's terrified of the internet and in fact packing into the servers to try to find that last human rights advocate and the social media is going wild in china and the regime isn't so certain that maybe it's not a bad thing that people have a way to vent through social media so you remember the story of the girl that was run over in the streets, that exploded into the

social media in china but i would say to the regime it's one thing people will just event, but eventually they will then to and want to organize to do something about it and so social media i think is going to continue to have a huge impact on how revolutions, reform, democratization takes place, so foreign policy experts in the years ahead are going to have to follow social media. >> i think it will be one of the most important sources for understanding what is going on beneath the government because the governments are not irrelevant they are more in power than they've ever been by the social media. a justification on the region to go into i3 a justification on the region to go into iraq you described it i think as a kind of security risk

first how did you change the collection of intelligence information after your experience and iraq there are questions about how accurate the information was. estimate of the most important thing that we did is to reorganize the intelligence agencies, and by the way, both as a result of the failure of 9/11 and the intelligence failure with iraq because in the prior case we had a wall between in domestic development which the fbi did and external intelligence the cia did, and when they crossed the did we couldn't talk to one another. in iraq we have begun. >> would you explain because the students may not understand why we have that gap.

>> it was there for good and legitimate reasons which is we didn't want our foreign intelligence agency being active inside the country and perhaps this body, to use that word of the domestic event on american citizens and so forth, so the cia was cut with the foreign intelligence agencies. the fbi that operated under the rules and the wall, think law and order, the fbi was the internal intelligence agency. well, just to give you one example, a few nights before 9/11, a telephone call was made in san diego by one of the men who would ultimately be the suicide a hijacker to afghanistan, but we couldn't track across the boundary because we didn't want the

tracking of the phone calls inside of the united states by the foreign intelligence. so, what i like to have known what he said a couple days before 9/11? when he realized that of course we had an internal attack on the security, we had to sew up the gaps of the cia is what they knew about what was going on inside of the country and the fbi is what they knew about what was going on inside of the country to talk to one another and that is the the so-called patriot act you probably read about closed the scene so that was one intelligence problem. the iraq problem was a little bit different but also structural. we have as many, depending how you count them is the different intelligence agencies, the defense department has one, energy department has one, the department, the cia has one etc, the cia was one. they were in charge of all of

this as a director of central and intelligence was also the head of the cia so we have a strange situation in which we have all of this different intelligence reporting but obviously the director and the cia trusted his own intelligence agency more than all the others and we found the counter evidence what was going on as the weapons of mass destruction program didn't get the hearing that it may have so we created the intelligence who isn't the director of the cia, he is a separate person to call come help the president understand when there are disagreements in the intelligence agency and give more of a total picture of what is going on so that is the big reform that was made. >> you also have talked in one

speech in this self-defense as the context of making the decision to go into iraq. i want to ask when you examined the situation and there was a discussion, did you look at other countries as well because if you look at the list of justification, you could put those on iran as well so why iraq rather than iran? did you look at more than one country? >> iraq was generous because we had been there since 1991, he found them he was systematically violating, she was found in 1991 to have been one year from the a crude nuclear device. he had weapons of mass destruction against the iranians

and against his own people the constraints or put on him for starting to break down to keep reserve force on the ground she was shooting at the aircraft practically every day. i remember the president asking donald rumsfeld what we do to get a lucky shot so we were in a state of hostility with iraq not in a state of peace with iraq. in 1998, president clinton had launched missiles against iraq and the inspectors who were supposed to be keeping the weapons of mass destruction programs under control left the country so she was different for his region into for including us but he was continuing we believe to build weapons of mass destruction and according to the agency had reconstituted the

chemical weapons, the biological and was on his way to reconstituting the nuclear program. he tried to assassinate president george h. w. bush, shooting at the aircraft he put 400,000 people in and wants to consider the biggest in the middle east as that is north korea was come as bad as iran was, they were not in the category like iraq where there were 16 security council resolutions that set he was a threat to international security. they are also on the israeli-palestinian issue and a generous in the sense that it's unique with other parts of the world. >> any student in international politics from the time that i was your age and in college which admittedly is a long time

ago, but from that time when you took a course on international politics, people started with the most volatile region in the world as the middle east. we try to do something about that at time. it's to get rid of that volatility in the middle east via >> every administration struggles with it she was the prime minister of israel when i was the secretary of state and the current president of the palestinian authority were pretty close to ideal in 2008, it was put on the table and he was in political and legal trouble taken up for a variety of reasons but the reason i wrote about it is i wanted to suggest that it wasn't a

hopeless cause. there was an answer and a two-stage solution that was available but the time isn't decided either. >> i would like to go back to the soviet union because you and your expertise on the soviet union, how do you see russia developing over the next few years and do you think that their importance in the world will continue to increase perhaps even suppressing china? i think the russians are in trouble in terms of the global standing and i think they know it. the russian economy is 80% on the oil gas and minerals that isn't a modern economy and i will tell you a little story that shows how much the oil and gas and minerals are linked up with personal fortunes, political power and the state. i was at the australian foreign minister's house one day having a meeting about energy policy

and he was going around asking people about the energy policy, and so the russians as well, you know, we understand that our oil and gas fields are technologically behind. but no foreigner will ever known russian olive oil and gas so we are going to buy the technology for the western oil companies. so i had been a director of the corporation and i said so don't you understand that there's advantages in their technology they aren't coming to sell you their technology to make you a better conductor and he said that is a really good point. [laughter] and then he said are you still the director of hushovd rahm? i was the secretary of state, but in russia dmitry medvedev who was the deputy prime minister was also the chairman, so the state economy and portions lead up with fair amount of violence, too.

now that he has decided that he is the once and future president of russia i think the chance that russia is going to break out of that and build on the other strengths it might have including a very smart population those have receded and i think unfortunately russia will not find a greater strength in the international economy it's pretty much dependent on the price of oil. >> looking back to the arab spring what do you think the lessons are? >> of the lesson is the authoritarianism is and stable. it's simply not stable. if men, women and children do not have a way to change their circumstances and change the government peacefully, they will do it violently. when we bring in romania, we learned of something that i've now called the moment he was the

dictator of romania and in 1989 with revolutions going on in poland and hungary and czechoslovakia she went into the square and he was exhorting the romanian people for what he had done for them at all of a sudden, one all lady yell the lawyer and then ten people and 100 people, then a thousand people, then 100,000 people are yelling lair and all of a sudden he realizes he better get out of there, something had gone wrong. instead of delivering him to freedom, the young military officer deliver some to the revolution and he and his wife are executed. the moment is when fever breaks down. either an old lady yells liar or a soldier has gone away from the crowd and refuses to fire or he's turned away from the crowd and then all that is left between the dictator and his people is anchor and that's when you've got in the arab spring and that's why authoritarianism isn't single.

>> what do you think about leading from behind as well multilevel collections. >> what the ask about a domestic issue because i share your view and had conversations with president bush about the failure of the immigration reform health serious do you think that issue is for the next presidential debate that we have? >> it's essential and let me tell you there are a lot of things that are not admired the one thing that is admired you

can do great things it doesn't matter where you came from it matters where you are going and that has left people to come from generations around the world to be part of that and it is why we have asian-americans and mexican-americans and german americans and indian americans the most ambitious people have wanted to be part of that. i don't know when immigrant became the enemy, but if we don't fix this, we are going to undo one of the greatest strengths because the only thing that keeps us from the demographics of europe and japan is immigration so i and a major proponent of the comprehensive immigration reform that first and foremost -- [applause]

we are in the shadows and have to deal with that. we are not a country that actually wants people to be afraid to go and take their sick child to a hospital, that's all the kind of country that we are coming and i worry that the states because the federal government hasn't acted are starting a patchwork now of immigration policies. but they are also true to the absolute fact that the united states of america is well served by the great launch of people that we are. >> i have three quick questions. [applause] >> next, let's pretend that you have been invited to be the moderator as a presidential debate. the theme is foreign policy.

what is the first question that you alaska both candidates for? >> do you believe that america has an exceptional and unique role to play in the world or is america just from any other country? because if america is just any other country, then you have no right to ask the american people to sustain the sacrifices that we have yet to play the role that we have on behalf of the international community for now that this in 60 years and so why is it exceptional? [applause] >> the second question is even though you are not responsible and they can't officially we key web anymore, what keeps you up at night in foreign policy? what are the things that you worry about that we often worry about? >> i worry about the list and

iran, pakistan. i worry about mexico. i worry that we don't pay even if attention to what is happening on our side of the border. if you live in california or new mexico, you know the drug cartels alone a lot of the space between northern mexico and the border of the united states and it is very dangerous. last year or two years ago there were 5,000 kidnappings and murders of officials, mexican officials, probably twice that in the last couple of years so very dangerous, but you know what keeps me about my is the question of whether the united states is going to reaffirm and somehow to the internal repair that we need to do. all i worry that we can't seem to get our entitlement under control. i worry we can't get our budget deficit under control and immigration policy and the fact that in case 12 education i can look at your zip code and tell whether or not you are going to

get a good education and that is not just wrong, it is actually probably going to undo us more quickly than anything the chinese could do because if we have people that are unemployable, and they will become a they have to live on the goal because they have no other choice. we will continue to have a situation in which it will pull us apart as a country faster than anything else if we are not optimistic in one country we won't leave that's probably the one that keeps me up at night. simitar is my final question if you have a choice between running for the senate in california, being a university president or being ahead of the national football league -- [laughter]

>> that's no contest. i used to want to be the commissioner of but i told him, you know, when i was struggling every day your job looks pretty good that actually from northern california it doesn't look so good anymore. and these days -- i have to say it, these days being a university professor of stanford university where the stanford cardinals are having quite a special season. you've had plenty of them, let us have one. estimate that is the greatest job in the world. >> thank you. they have little presence in

the ground following the revolution of 1979 and to pull out from lebanon a few years later. washington held a limited defense agreement but with no one else. there were for example no u.s. troops in saudi arabia in 1990 or any formal pledge to defend the kingdom or kuwait. in fact on the eve of the iraqi invasion as the tensions in the region grew, american policymakers put to each of the state's the idea that perhaps this would be a joint exercise. let's show saddam that we are in this together. only one of the united arab emirates even agreed to this limited demonstration of the solidarity. they feared more than some of the backlash with what they routinely called the great state. and in fact, saddam hussein directly told the united states

ambassador before the invasion, quote, she felt secure, secure in the belief that no government would ever allow the united states to lose for that purpose defending kuwait. why was he so secure in his belief? for two reasons. first because in his view the muslim states would reject the troops on their soil, and second, because in the practical terms, none of them to date had ever done so since 1979. of course iran had, but that was not a model that other leaders were to follow. so, saddam hussein believed the muslim states would reject the direct american aid, and more specifically the station of american troops on the soil. in retrospect this is perhaps the worst strategic miscalculation. but it was hardly any irrational one. for american influence in the persian gulf is offshore, rather than on site. this wasn't the 38 parallel in korea. this was in before the data in germany, the places where

american troops were stationed directly in harm's way as tripwires of american resolve. on the contrary, american policymakers for decades at this point had long hoped to influence the gulf and keep the oil flowing with as little direct involvement as possible so long as the soviets didn't interfere in the region themselves, president carter had declared in 1980 so long as they didn't stop up the gulf, president reagan declared a few years later the american planners were by and large content and ultimately didn't matter. it happens as long as the oil continues to flow and this was the bush administration's first line as well annunciating in fact a year before saddam hussein's innovation enunciated in the latter part of 1989 and the national security of 1986 that laid out the full scope and rationale of the american involvement in the region. this document, which you can get if you like, doesn't use the

word freedom, it doesn't use the word democracy, it doesn't mention the particular leaders and it doesn't talk about the regime types or radical islamic and certainly doesn't mengin wmd. it says instead, quote, access to the persian gulf oil is vital to national security interests, period. memories of hostages in iran destroy the barracks in beirut and that is reason enough to worry and this context matters understanding of the widespread reluctance to do more in response to the invasion. for saddam hussein didn't current-gen as i mentioned before that long-range destruction of oil. moreover, the middle east wasn't a particularly appealing place for those in american politics with a sense of short to medium and long-term history. tikrit sample the secretary of state, james baker, who at this point had advised presidents for decades or years excuse me, but had been one of his closest

friends for decades. he was secretary of state, and upon hearing this news, contemplating it, getting back to washington, he wasn't in washington at the time, he told the president and the oval office to close the door, and she told him, quote, i know that you are aware of the fact that this has all of the ingredients that has brought down a free of the last five presidents. a hostage crisis, body bags and a full-fledged economic recession caused by the 40-dollar oil, end of quote. indeed, we need to recall the decision to move the american troops into the gulf was heartily embraced across the board of the american politics from 1990. just at the same time we should recall the congressional opposition to the war was far from being partisan. it was rather conducted in the true sense of the concern. as the senate majority leader george mitchell argued the rest of factors american intervon